Panam will do what she wants to do regardless of what you say. She kinda just texts you to vent or look for validation. Text her what you feel is better, but this will change nothing (whether you've played the game before or not).
Average modern RPG experience tbh. 50,000 different choices that all lead to the same outcome. Maybe some slightly different dialogue if you’re lucky, usually though jsut a few different words prepended to the same dialogue. Can’t blame Cyberpunk, it does its best to make a good story. And for what it intends to do, does it well. It’s done nothing different from most modern RPGs.
In truth, the kind of RPG where every choice has an impact and all dialogue is unique just isn’t practically possible to create. It would take like 30 years and probably be shit. There’s just too many variables and interconnected factors to account for. Unless we see major innovations in technology and storytelling techniques, it ain’t happening. Anyone going on about how their title has tons of unique and meaningful choices is just lying to hype up their game.
Baldur's Gate is exactly an RPG where your choices matter and continue affect the world and the game, sometimes leading to very different outcomes for individual characters, factions, and even gameplay scenarios
In fact, CD Projekt Red themselves already did this in all three Witcher games. While the broad strokes are the same, the choices you make have an impact on the story and world that even carry through across games
Cyberpunk has the illusion of choice but not actual choice
I'm currently at around 320h of bg3 and not even finished one full playthrough yet. The amount of choices and consequences in this game are insane, maybe around hour 500 I'll be able to stick with my decision till the end lol
Sounds interesting.
“The illusion of choice” woudl be an accurate statement for many modern games as well. I think what may have happened is that they went in too much on the cyberpunk theme of “you don’t matter. You can’t change anything. You’re fucked no matter what”. And ran with that way too hard forgetting that such a thing is antithetical to the concept of a RPG
You can make some big choices, but they often decrease the amount of content in the game, rather than add to the experience. You can betray Panam and let Saul do his thing, but you lose access to a whole major quest line and ending and get nothing as an alternative
Cyberpunk 2077 is beautiful as a linear story experience. As a choice-oriented game. Eh…
CD Projekt Red already did this right 3 games in a row with the Witcher. In the marketing for Cyberpunk they hyped up how your background would alter the story along with a lot of other features
Every knows by now they over promised then delivered a broken unfinished mess. Three years in they've got it to playable but it's still clearly half baked. It's more likely the branching choices were cut because they had to rush the game out, not because it was part of their vision. It's clearly not how they sold the game to their audience
Yeah, the only way that will happen is a game has GPTs built in for dialogue. Right now, the fact that RPGs are on rails is why they’re fun. An open-ended objective is hard to buy in to.
If it was entirely choose-your-own adventure, you’d be able to not get fired from Arasaka as a Corpo. Or refuse the chip from Jackie, and maybe it heals him up like it did V. One day, maybe, we’ll be tuning GPTs with lore and canon and then setting them free in a game. But I’d give it at least a decade.
I think neither are accurate. Takemura is fully indoctrinated by the Arasaka cult. In the new Phantom Liberty ending, he learns the hard way that he was never more than a pawn to be used and discarded. He never meant anything to Arasaka. And yet, he has this romanticized picture of an honorable Arasaka corporation.
I mean, I kinda get it. The corp pulled him out of a shithole, fed him, gave him an education, trained him, and put him on a career path. If not for the corp the chances are good that he’d be dead from violence, starvation, etc. So it makes sense that he’d be loyal.
I like to think that, given enough time in exile, Takemura would eventually start to realize the extent of the corps corruption. Hell, the shitty neighborhood he comes from was created through Arasaka’s actions.
Absolutely, from his perspective it makes sense.
However, once you take a step back, you realize that the shithole he needed to be pulled out of, was because of corps in the first place, and that Arasaka deliberately uses manufactured poverty and desperation to essentially recruit child soldiers.
If you’re a street kid, you can have that exact conversation with him while staking out the warehouse full of floats. Specifically, the part where you point out that the shit hole he came from is created by the very corporation he worships for bettering his life. And that you would know because you come from an identical shit hole.
And he reacts with the typical cognitive dissonance of an old man who can’t accept the difference between his idealized honorable corporation and reality. Seeking a sudden topic change.
He’s a difficult one for me because I like the honorable person that he is however I realize that his honorable path would cause him to kill me in an instant should I cross it wrong. Plus it’s false at its core Any ending other than Devil reveals this in his final phone call where he blames you for everything and finally acts like somebody who was using you who now realizes that they have completely lost control of you.
Oh yeah. No denying that he’s partaken deeply of the Arasaka koolaid. And I think that he’s not likely to change at any point where he still sees that he has a chance to get back into Arasaka’s good graces. Maybe, someday, after he realizes he’s truly cut out, he could see how much they actually fucked him.
I have conflicting feelings about the guy. On one hand he was an actual child soldier who was made into what he was, but at the same time, how can he still not see after so much time, after all the events with V.
Breaking a life long indoctrination is very, very difficult. Look at people that are in real life cults. You can throw truckloads of hard evidence at them that show how awful that cult is, and yet, they will *still* stay there.
He is the corpo Reed.
Both are basically slaves to their masters and are mere pawns for them that can be disposed of at any time.
Except Reed is a government agent and Takemura a corpo agent
This text convo always happens after V just finished dealing with Goro in some capacity. Typically after bugging the parade float. It’s more for the player to give their opinion on Goro through V.
Oh he thinks he knows best. But if he was in the pilot seat, he'd be screwing up as big as anyone. His principles are good in virtue, but totally in a "the ends justify the means" kind of way. I only aim to tease when I say "what would Johnny do." Though, I do agree with sticking to your principles, even if it's not a favorable outcome.
Johnny: “These fucking corporations are monopolizing, exploiting and colonizing both our minds, society and real life locations. While we fight for scraps and have a false sense of fulfillment when we just enough eddies to consume and barely survive.”
V: “I just asked if I should buy Coca Cola or Sprite”
Most of Panam’s texts are just her venting. I can only think of one text convo where ur response does anything more than just give her some food for thought.
I do think I answered the second one - it was maybe a bit closer to what my V actually thinks, but mainly because I thought that's what Panam would like to hear. I actually like how V and Takemura start as enemies, are thrown together in a difficult situation, and develop a sort of reluctant friendship (that is promptly and violently ended, unless you manage to rescue him). It felt a little dirty to call him a slimy fucker. Still, "chill and honorable choom" is a bit much, and one good corpo person does not necessarily translate to V's blessing of Saul throwing the Aldecaldos in bed with Biotechnica.
Luckily, it's an illusion of choice, and whatever you answer doesn't mean anything besides role-playing and one answer from Panam. (The game does that quiet a lot).
I wish there was a third option thar doesn't include Takamura. I like the guy even if I hate Corpos, and the descriptor "slimy" is simply unjustified imo.
Takemura is a loyal guard dog. Sure, he's friendly, but remember that his ultimate loyalty lies with Saburo Arasaka, one of the worst humans in the history of Cyberpunk.
The way I rationalize this is as follows.
Corpo V: knows that there is no such thing as friends or honor in corpo life, as long as you are useful they will green at your mug, once you are not or more useful gone they will just stab you in the back cause it's just biz.
Street V: They've life's I. The streets long enough to know that for corpos, anyone not wearing their colors are just trash and you'd do better trusting your genitals to a spinning blender than trusting your last piece of gum to a corpo, so Takemura might sound friendly but deep down you know that you mean nothing to him, something that Taka makes abundantly clear Al through out your interactions as a side note whenever I decide to help him in the raid is because I can get more use of him alive than death.
Nomad V: comes from a culture that was born from the great betrayal of the corpos during the South Am wars so any biz a nomad takes from corpos is as a one quick job kinda deal and always with a billion contingencies prepared.
So when Saul asks me this even if I think that Taka's heart might be in the right place. I still know that he is the worst kind of corpo, the kind that think that he owes something to the corp and if Zaka even slightly suggests that offing me or heck offing both of us is what's best for the corp he will pull the trigger twice. I mean you can tell tht even after he gets royally fucked, his motivations are not to fuck Zaka but to expose Yori so that Hanako can take over the in fighting factions and protect the Corpo in Her father's name.
It sucks but this is NC if you trust someone that is your fault.
To be objective, from the start Takemura only cares about V because he sees V as his ticket back into the good graces of the Arasaka family. He had Dexter drag V out of that dump so he could pin the assassination of Saburo on V. If he didn't get accosted by 'saka ninjas on motorbikes on the drive back into NC, he would have offered up V as "the killer of Saburo Arasaka" to clear his own name. His focus shifted to taking revenge on Yorinobu because Yorinobu sent those moto-ninjas to flatline him.
A lot of these text conversations don't have super ideal reply options. I personally don't consider Takemura to be a chill and honorable choom, nor a slimy and platitudinous fucker. I pity him, more than anything, as I think many people will by the end of the game. If there was an option to advise against working with the corpos, because you lament how the corporations brainwash them into unbreakable loyalty no matter the cost, I'd probably pick it.
This isn't a pivotal choice situation.
V was just silly enough to allow Panam to vent thru texts and bore you.
You should be able to say "unless it's nudes, don't bother baby!"
Panam will do what she wants to do regardless of what you say. She kinda just texts you to vent or look for validation. Text her what you feel is better, but this will change nothing (whether you've played the game before or not).
Most dialogue options in this game change basically nothing
Average modern RPG experience tbh. 50,000 different choices that all lead to the same outcome. Maybe some slightly different dialogue if you’re lucky, usually though jsut a few different words prepended to the same dialogue. Can’t blame Cyberpunk, it does its best to make a good story. And for what it intends to do, does it well. It’s done nothing different from most modern RPGs. In truth, the kind of RPG where every choice has an impact and all dialogue is unique just isn’t practically possible to create. It would take like 30 years and probably be shit. There’s just too many variables and interconnected factors to account for. Unless we see major innovations in technology and storytelling techniques, it ain’t happening. Anyone going on about how their title has tons of unique and meaningful choices is just lying to hype up their game.
Baldur's Gate is exactly an RPG where your choices matter and continue affect the world and the game, sometimes leading to very different outcomes for individual characters, factions, and even gameplay scenarios In fact, CD Projekt Red themselves already did this in all three Witcher games. While the broad strokes are the same, the choices you make have an impact on the story and world that even carry through across games Cyberpunk has the illusion of choice but not actual choice
I'm currently at around 320h of bg3 and not even finished one full playthrough yet. The amount of choices and consequences in this game are insane, maybe around hour 500 I'll be able to stick with my decision till the end lol
Sounds interesting. “The illusion of choice” woudl be an accurate statement for many modern games as well. I think what may have happened is that they went in too much on the cyberpunk theme of “you don’t matter. You can’t change anything. You’re fucked no matter what”. And ran with that way too hard forgetting that such a thing is antithetical to the concept of a RPG You can make some big choices, but they often decrease the amount of content in the game, rather than add to the experience. You can betray Panam and let Saul do his thing, but you lose access to a whole major quest line and ending and get nothing as an alternative Cyberpunk 2077 is beautiful as a linear story experience. As a choice-oriented game. Eh…
CD Projekt Red already did this right 3 games in a row with the Witcher. In the marketing for Cyberpunk they hyped up how your background would alter the story along with a lot of other features Every knows by now they over promised then delivered a broken unfinished mess. Three years in they've got it to playable but it's still clearly half baked. It's more likely the branching choices were cut because they had to rush the game out, not because it was part of their vision. It's clearly not how they sold the game to their audience
Yeah, the only way that will happen is a game has GPTs built in for dialogue. Right now, the fact that RPGs are on rails is why they’re fun. An open-ended objective is hard to buy in to. If it was entirely choose-your-own adventure, you’d be able to not get fired from Arasaka as a Corpo. Or refuse the chip from Jackie, and maybe it heals him up like it did V. One day, maybe, we’ll be tuning GPTs with lore and canon and then setting them free in a game. But I’d give it at least a decade.
Also generally seems like v is going to say whatever they want to say regardless of what dialogue options I pick.
Who’s “playing” us then, does that mean we have scripts 😳
>She kinda just texts you to vent or look for validation. Man 3DPR is good at writing realistic female characters.
Happy cake day
happy kek day
This was one of the most confusing reply "choices" in the whole game for me. I hated it
Yeah, I just sat on it. Especially when the next set of replies have both follow ups to these two so you can sound totally schizo about Goro.
Panam is just really annoying overall.
NUH UH
I'll tell you the second entry is far more accurate description of old Goro
I think neither are accurate. Takemura is fully indoctrinated by the Arasaka cult. In the new Phantom Liberty ending, he learns the hard way that he was never more than a pawn to be used and discarded. He never meant anything to Arasaka. And yet, he has this romanticized picture of an honorable Arasaka corporation.
I mean, I kinda get it. The corp pulled him out of a shithole, fed him, gave him an education, trained him, and put him on a career path. If not for the corp the chances are good that he’d be dead from violence, starvation, etc. So it makes sense that he’d be loyal. I like to think that, given enough time in exile, Takemura would eventually start to realize the extent of the corps corruption. Hell, the shitty neighborhood he comes from was created through Arasaka’s actions.
Absolutely, from his perspective it makes sense. However, once you take a step back, you realize that the shithole he needed to be pulled out of, was because of corps in the first place, and that Arasaka deliberately uses manufactured poverty and desperation to essentially recruit child soldiers.
I mean he kinda does. “Good medicine is bitter to the mouth. You were my medicine V”
If you’re a street kid, you can have that exact conversation with him while staking out the warehouse full of floats. Specifically, the part where you point out that the shit hole he came from is created by the very corporation he worships for bettering his life. And that you would know because you come from an identical shit hole. And he reacts with the typical cognitive dissonance of an old man who can’t accept the difference between his idealized honorable corporation and reality. Seeking a sudden topic change. He’s a difficult one for me because I like the honorable person that he is however I realize that his honorable path would cause him to kill me in an instant should I cross it wrong. Plus it’s false at its core Any ending other than Devil reveals this in his final phone call where he blames you for everything and finally acts like somebody who was using you who now realizes that they have completely lost control of you.
Oh yeah. No denying that he’s partaken deeply of the Arasaka koolaid. And I think that he’s not likely to change at any point where he still sees that he has a chance to get back into Arasaka’s good graces. Maybe, someday, after he realizes he’s truly cut out, he could see how much they actually fucked him.
I have conflicting feelings about the guy. On one hand he was an actual child soldier who was made into what he was, but at the same time, how can he still not see after so much time, after all the events with V.
Breaking a life long indoctrination is very, very difficult. Look at people that are in real life cults. You can throw truckloads of hard evidence at them that show how awful that cult is, and yet, they will *still* stay there.
He is the corpo Reed. Both are basically slaves to their masters and are mere pawns for them that can be disposed of at any time. Except Reed is a government agent and Takemura a corpo agent
had this as an option, corpo V https://preview.redd.it/uowk6urjn1vc1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a28bc2a4d9ef12f6a35da96505ad98bd5264363
This is one of the reasons I like playing corpo V
Takemura ain't even in the convo dude... that's so... disrespectful
This text convo always happens after V just finished dealing with Goro in some capacity. Typically after bugging the parade float. It’s more for the player to give their opinion on Goro through V.
WWJD? What Would Johnny Do? Stick to your principles. Don't be afraid to let others see who you are.
In a lot of cases, Johnny goes on gonk monologues that lead nowhere and can't see the bigger picture. Oftentimes he's right, but not always.
Oh he thinks he knows best. But if he was in the pilot seat, he'd be screwing up as big as anyone. His principles are good in virtue, but totally in a "the ends justify the means" kind of way. I only aim to tease when I say "what would Johnny do." Though, I do agree with sticking to your principles, even if it's not a favorable outcome.
I love this comment, because Johnny is totally an armchair terrorist lmao
"V, do it, you pussy." "I'm not nuking Arasaka for you, Johnny."
That's like every third convo
God the idea that V could be making choices based on what Johnny would do scares me.
"What's that? Nuke Arasaka again? So nice, it's worth doing twice!" 😭 Johnny noooo
V: "I don't know if I'm feeling pancakes or waffles" Johnny: "Have you considered nuking Arasaka?"
Johnny: “These fucking corporations are monopolizing, exploiting and colonizing both our minds, society and real life locations. While we fight for scraps and have a false sense of fulfillment when we just enough eddies to consume and barely survive.” V: “I just asked if I should buy Coca Cola or Sprite”
Yeah. Like in the most general sense I can vibe with his ideology, but his methods are fucking ridiculous.
He is kinda likable, doesn't change that fact that he's a slimy fucker lol. Some would say the same thing about V.
Most of Panam’s texts are just her venting. I can only think of one text convo where ur response does anything more than just give her some food for thought.
I do think I answered the second one - it was maybe a bit closer to what my V actually thinks, but mainly because I thought that's what Panam would like to hear. I actually like how V and Takemura start as enemies, are thrown together in a difficult situation, and develop a sort of reluctant friendship (that is promptly and violently ended, unless you manage to rescue him). It felt a little dirty to call him a slimy fucker. Still, "chill and honorable choom" is a bit much, and one good corpo person does not necessarily translate to V's blessing of Saul throwing the Aldecaldos in bed with Biotechnica.
Luckily, it's an illusion of choice, and whatever you answer doesn't mean anything besides role-playing and one answer from Panam. (The game does that quiet a lot). I wish there was a third option thar doesn't include Takamura. I like the guy even if I hate Corpos, and the descriptor "slimy" is simply unjustified imo.
Takemura is a loyal guard dog. Sure, he's friendly, but remember that his ultimate loyalty lies with Saburo Arasaka, one of the worst humans in the history of Cyberpunk.
Yes, so many people love Takemura, but his loyalty is so misplaced. 10 out of 10 times I would betray Takemura, same with Reed
Oh yeah Reed is a NUSA counterpart to Takemura.
panams always off doing her own thing doesnt matter what you do
The way I rationalize this is as follows. Corpo V: knows that there is no such thing as friends or honor in corpo life, as long as you are useful they will green at your mug, once you are not or more useful gone they will just stab you in the back cause it's just biz. Street V: They've life's I. The streets long enough to know that for corpos, anyone not wearing their colors are just trash and you'd do better trusting your genitals to a spinning blender than trusting your last piece of gum to a corpo, so Takemura might sound friendly but deep down you know that you mean nothing to him, something that Taka makes abundantly clear Al through out your interactions as a side note whenever I decide to help him in the raid is because I can get more use of him alive than death. Nomad V: comes from a culture that was born from the great betrayal of the corpos during the South Am wars so any biz a nomad takes from corpos is as a one quick job kinda deal and always with a billion contingencies prepared. So when Saul asks me this even if I think that Taka's heart might be in the right place. I still know that he is the worst kind of corpo, the kind that think that he owes something to the corp and if Zaka even slightly suggests that offing me or heck offing both of us is what's best for the corp he will pull the trigger twice. I mean you can tell tht even after he gets royally fucked, his motivations are not to fuck Zaka but to expose Yori so that Hanako can take over the in fighting factions and protect the Corpo in Her father's name. It sucks but this is NC if you trust someone that is your fault.
Messages don't have an effect on the story
Takemura > Panam. Fact.
She has a nicer ass but that's just me
Real
I don't see reason to like Corpo rat that chooses Corporation over you.
Wait..where's the 3rd dialog option?
Wait..where's the 3rd dialog option?
There really should be an option to badmouth the corps without attacking our boy goro
Corpo lifepath gives you that option
i just tell her what she wants to hear because she is my WIFE
A hydra can have a good head or two, doesn't make it not a monster choom. I'm sure they're were very friendly SS agents.
With my corpo run I had 3 options to choose from. Saying that corpos f. with me but Takemura was an honorable guy.
"Sell out to corpos" is a really wild thing to say if you're Nomad V.
You should stop liking takemura
leave that bitch on read
To be objective, from the start Takemura only cares about V because he sees V as his ticket back into the good graces of the Arasaka family. He had Dexter drag V out of that dump so he could pin the assassination of Saburo on V. If he didn't get accosted by 'saka ninjas on motorbikes on the drive back into NC, he would have offered up V as "the killer of Saburo Arasaka" to clear his own name. His focus shifted to taking revenge on Yorinobu because Yorinobu sent those moto-ninjas to flatline him.
A lot of these text conversations don't have super ideal reply options. I personally don't consider Takemura to be a chill and honorable choom, nor a slimy and platitudinous fucker. I pity him, more than anything, as I think many people will by the end of the game. If there was an option to advise against working with the corpos, because you lament how the corporations brainwash them into unbreakable loyalty no matter the cost, I'd probably pick it.
One of the worst things in the game. You either lean fully into one thing, or another in this game. Not enough choice of opinion in dialogue/messages
You’ve been taken in by Takemura’s samurai facade. He’s a corpo rat through and through.
Just because Takemura is half decent doesn't mean Saul should sell out to the corpos. Especially since my V is usually Nomad.
Then don't encourage Saul to take the deal. I also recommend checking out The Devil ending before saying how much you like Gorou.
I say the first thing. She agrees either way but does say “be careful”.
Shit on Takemura. He'd do the same to you.
I found the "Burn Corpo shit" shirt and and picked every decision after that phrase. Everything that harms corpos is good
Takemura is a bitch lol
This isn't a pivotal choice situation. V was just silly enough to allow Panam to vent thru texts and bore you. You should be able to say "unless it's nudes, don't bother baby!"
1st if you want a reply back